Tolstoy and the Purple Chair covers themes ranging from sorrow and loss to family and comfort, to remembrance and hope; it spans the time from my first visit to a bookmobile at age three across the decades to years later when I read a book a day, every day, for one year; and it includes real-life characters (family and friends) and the wonderful (or awful) characters I met in books.

She looks at me, here in front of the window, watching the boys so she won't have to worry and reading one of the stack of books I bring home every week from the bookmobile, and she shakes her head and starts again.